Joel M Bradshaw

8You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book?–Psalm 56

This psalm came with a notation of when it was written. It was during this humorous episode of David’s life as a fugitive. 1 Samuel 21…

10That day David fled from Saul and went to Achish king of Gath. 11But the servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one they sing about in their dances:

“ ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?”

12David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. 13So he pretended to be insane in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard.

14Achish said to his servants, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? 15Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?”

Verse 15 I laugh at. It pictures the Philistine king as having so many crazy people around him that he doesn’t need one more. What an image David was portraying.

David ran from Saul and hid with the Philistines. In Goliath’s hometown of all places. He would be known here most of all. It’s hard to imagine running from an enemy and hiding in another enemy. Yet we do this all the time. Anyone who tries to numb their pain with a destructive habit does this. In the midst of depression, we hate the shame, but if we run to it, we feel a momentary acceptance before the pain begins again. It doesn’t help us, but we take its identity for a time.

David’s psalm was full of turmoil, and yet hope. David’s story was that his pain and suffering were real, but God’s care and faithfulness was also real. He saw God as noticing his “wanderings, tossing, miseries.” It’s a Hebrew word that only occurred in this Psalm. All those times of emotional anguish were recorded in God’s book. Maybe it was the same book that records every one of our days. Psalm 139…

16Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

If this is the case, then God already knew our pain before we did. Recorded and preserved by God before they were ever experienced by us. God then stands waiting to collect those tears in a bottle. Tears he already knew were coming. Tears he had planned for us on our journeys.

Our miseries and tears are precious to God. He sees our sufferings and understands our pains. The fact that God keeps record of our struggles means that he is attentive and caring to respond. The story you tell yourself is either that God doesn’t care or that he does. And therefore don’t hide your struggle, your pain, your tears from him. He already has them recorded and the tears of despair and shame and regret stand by to be noticed and collected. Trust God in the midst of your struggle.–JMB